Into The Abyss: A Journey To Remember In Central Laos (Part 6)

This is part six of the series. If you haven’t been following along with the story you can catch up here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
“Well they say that there is strength in numbers,” I said to Bea as the bus lumbered down the road. She nodded in agreement as we gave into the fact that today we’d put our faith in some wicked combination of the wisdom of ‘they’ and an emergency dose of Imodium. If these tiny tablets failed to temporarily turn our stomachs into cement we were going to go down as a team dammit. Or at least we swore not to tell anyone else if the other went sprinting to the front of the bus in a last ditch effort to save our favorite pair of travel pants from an early retirement. Pushing the very real threat of that aside we clinked water bottles and tossed our tiny prayers down the hatch.

Our nerves remained high for the next half hour as the fear of the unknown had shifted firmly from the depths of the Kong Lor cave to the washing machine like battle going on in our stomachs. The previous night’s horror story might not have ended with us hanging from meat hooks slowly bleeding out, but given the current situation you couldn’t help but delve a little into the cynical debate of which situation was preferable: being painted as a traveling pseudo-martyr back home for heroically resisting the maniacal serial killer in Thakhek or being known as the guy who shit his pants at full sprint trying to make it to the shady spot on the side of the road. Thankfully before I finalized my pros and cons list for each I looked up to find that the bus had emerged from the sparsely populated countryside and was making a beeline for a small roadside restaurant where we would stop off for about twenty minutes for supplies. Or, you know, to waddle unnoticed to the bathroom and end our personal misery.

“Thank god” Bea said as we both gave each other a look that said ‘who’s first?’

“Go for it” I told her figuring that if I had gotten this far I should be able to hold out a little longer.

Pro tip: Go for the chili spiced and avoid the seaweed.

Just like that she was off and I was tasked with occupying my mind for a few more minutes before I was able to flip the bird to the empty packet of Imodium with a big ‘thanks for nothing.’ Graciously, the time passed quickly as I spent it scouring the always-interesting offerings of middle of nowhere Southeast Asian road stops. You could spend hours of disbelief caught between a laugh and a vomit as you scoured the oddities available for purchase. Rotting beef on a string that someone informed me was supposed to be ‘beef jerky’. Seaweed chips that taste like you just ate a spoonful of sand and then ran your tongue across a freshly mowed lawn. The cornucopia of different soybean milk flavors, and of course the crack cocaine substitute “M150″ that is the area’s version of Red Bull.

Before I could put myself out of my misery by downing a toxic cocktail of all-of-the-above Bea returned from the back of the building.

“Two questions for you.” I said preparing to ask her the two questions that you always ask in this part of the world.

“How is it?” I said not really wanting the answer as I had no choice in the matter anyway.

“Squatter.” She responded no longer interested in what I had to say as she had noticed a few new soybean milk flavors she had yet to try.

This guy has great form.

A squatter. My heart sank. These were the words I had been dreading. The words I had been avoiding for the last month and a half. Oh I had seen a squat toilet before, sure, but you can be damn certain that they were only fleeting glimpses as I had about-faced immediately to find the much more familiar western toilet. Now though I was out of options. The bus would be firing back up soon and I didn’t have the capacity to wait this one out. I would have to face this thing head on.

My right foot felt like it weighed a ton as I slowly picked it up off the ground in hopes of starting my momentum toward the dingy hole in the ground that awaited me at the end of my walk. My vision blurred as I spotted the letters ‘WC’ spray-painted onto a wooden planked door in the back of the building. “Well,” I thought, “this is it.”

When I swung the door open there it was, just as Bea had said: a squat toilet. All of the research and conversations with squat toilet veterans wouldn’t help me now. Oh I knew what I had to do but all of the training and reassurance flew straight out the window when the bright lights came on.

“You just put your feet on the foot pads and squat down as far as you can,” Bea had told me one hundred times before with “what do you do with your pants?” being my immediate reaction every single time the topic was broached.

“Uh you just pull them down” She had said time and time again completely ignoring the fact that in these conversations I played the role of a six year old girl trying to explain to her parents why there was no way she was shining a light under her bed.

“Just pull them down,” I thought reciting her sage advice. “Nope, no fucking way,” I said out loud and in one motion I did my best “Boogie Nights” impression and was standing completely naked, already sweating profusely in the splintered light of my private little outhouse. The Imodium had already failed me and I wasn’t about to end this journey early because of an unfortunate trajectory.

When I finally emerged from battle Bea was finishing off her second soy milk and seemed completely oblivious to the huge smile on my face. “I did it!” I exclaimed unperturbed by her suddenly lackadaisical attitude. “Did what?” She asked. “I conquered the squat toilet,” I said my voice cracking like an excited fourteen year old boy talking to the senior captain of the cheerleading squad. “Oh, congratulations” she said with the non-interest of the senior captain of the cheerleading squad talking to an excited fourteen year old boy. Before my feeble attempt at a rebuttal escaped my lips the bus let out two loud blasts from it’s horn signaling the end of my triumphant pit stop and just like that we were all back on the bus making our way one step closer to the Kong Lor cave. As I fell into my seat I couldn’t help but smile and think “one ominous dark hole down, one to go.”
The story continues soon! Check back next week to see what happens next.